TNR Makin' 'em Famous

October 15, 2008 / 12:16 PM
/ The Politico

John McCain has promised, if elected, to make earmark-hunters famous and Garry Trudeau has been following his lead lately, making famous the names of lobbyists who work on McCain's campaign. Dave Jamieson, writing in The New Republic, continues the famous-making trend today, naming former Hill staffers who have gone on to lobby the same financial committees they previously served.

Here's TNR naming names...

As it turned out, the relationship between the finance lobby and the finance staffers proved fruitful for both sides. A slew of committee aides left the Hill and landed on the payrolls of some of the very firms that had been lobbying them and their bosses, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Former Oxley adviser Carter McDowell moved on to the American Bankers Association; Karen Lynch Calton, one-time counsel to the committee, has lobbied for the Consumer Bankers Association; Greg Zerzan, an aide to Oxley, eventually went to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association; Linda Dallas Rich, a committee adviser, headed to the New York Stock Exchange; longtime Oxley aide Clinton Jones hopped to Fannie for a spell, before returning to Congress to serve Bachus on the finance committee; and even though Baker had been a perennial foe to the GSEs, the congressman's own former chief of staff, Duane Duncan, became a star on Fannie's lobbying team.